With enhanced processing performance of a personal computer (hereafter referred to as a PC), a PC having the function of reproducing contents including animation data and sound data has spread in the market. Such a PC reproduces contents using various kinds of mediums typified by communication equipment and a disk.
Contents provided to a PC are subject to stepwise processing including filtering, compression encoding, and multiplexing. Processing at each stage is performed based on standards chosen depending on the characteristic of a medium and the quality of an animation image. Therefore, processing suitable for the contents needs to be performed sequentially in order to reproduce contents in a PC. For example, when the reproduction of contents is instructed in a PC, the header information of contents is read at first to acquire kinds of processing applied to the contents at each stage. Subsequently, a processing program corresponding to the acquired kind of the processing is installed so as to be executable, and the processing programs are set in a manner that data processed by one processing program is subject to processing by the other processing programs.
Incidentally, a digital camera that operates only a minimum number of programs at the time of starting processing (for example, refer to Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2001-209545) has been known as an example of electronic equipment that operates by selecting a different program depending on a kind of processing. This digital camera operates only the programs necessary for the selected operation mode.
When contents are reproduced in a PC, it takes time to select necessary processing programs among plural processing program candidates and to connect them in the order of processing. For example, particularly when contents with an image are reproduced to be displayed, it takes much time until the contents are provided to a user, which is a problem. The digital camera described in the above technique is not an exception, as it operates programs after necessary processing is determined by setting the operating mode and thus it takes time until processing result is obtained after the necessary processing is determined.